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(Occupy Houston) On Monday, Dec 12th, Occupy Houston, Occupy Now, and concerned citizens from all over the state met at the entrance of the Port of Houston and SHUT IT DOWN! 19 Occupiers were arrested. Charges range from blocking a public roadway, a misdemeanor, to using a criminal instrument to block a roadway, a felony offense.

(NYT)At least 17 Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested on Monday at the World Financial Center, whose owner, Brookfield Properties, also owns Zuccotti Park, the public space where the protesters maintained an encampment for two months before being cleared by the police in mid-November.

“We thought we would come over and give Brookfield a direct message,” said Bill Dobbs, an Occupy Wall Street organizer.

About 200 protesters milled and chanted inside the center’s winter garden, a public atrium with soaring ceilings. They also stretched yellow adhesive tape marked with the word “Occupy” across the granite floor of the atrium. From a second-floor balcony, a banner was unfurled with the words “solidarity” and “west coast port shutdown,” in support of protests in cities like Oakland, Seattle and San Diego, where activists with the Occupy movement announced plans to blockade ports.

Onlookers peered from other parts of the balcony, or hurried across the main floor of the atrium, where protesters swirled in a circle.

Soon police officers arrived. A man wearing a suit, who would not say who he worked for announced: “If you do not leave, you will be arrested.”

A police commander said the man worked for Brookfield. A spokeswoman for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

A few minutes later, officers began herding protesters down a wide staircase in the atrium and pushed them toward a door. At one point, several officers pounced on a man on the ground. A moment later, officers chased another man through the atrium, cornering him near glass windows and arresting him.

Most of the protesters and several news reporters and photographers were pushed outside. But about 10 men and 7 women were placed in handcuffs inside the atrium, then removed and placed in police vehicles.

The protests began when a few hundred people assembled on Broadway, opposite Zuccotti Park, and marched to the Goldman Sachs headquarters nearby. Some of those on the march compared Goldman Sachs to a giant squid with tentacles that spread throughout the global financial system.

“We’re demonstrating the links between the excesses in finance and the excesses in industry,” said Aaron Bornstein, 31, a neuroscientist from Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “And the labor-busting power of industry.”

After rallying outside the Goldman Sachs building on West Street while brandishing placards and papier-mâché replicas of squids, some of the protesters then headed to the World Financial Center.

Occupy Princeton (www.occupyprinceton.net) students mic-check a JP Morgan-Chase Treasury Services info session on December 7, 2011. This is the first direct action taken up by Occupy Princeton – more to come.

Full Script below:

“Princeton’s motto is:
In the nation’s service and service of all nations
JP Morgan-Chase, your actions violate our motto
Your predatory lending practices helped crash our economy
We’ve bailed out your executives’ bonuses
You’ve evicted struggling homeowners while taking their tax money
You support mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia
which destroys our ecological future
In light of these actions,
we protest the campus culture
that whitewashes the crooked dealings of Wall Street
as a prestigious career path.
We are here today
as a voice for the 99%
shut out by a system that punishes them
just for being born without privilege.
What we need is not a university for the 1%,
but a university “In the Nation’s Service,
and in the Service of All Nations.”

(Occupy Portland) PORTLAND, Ore. – Today, rank and file union members, non-union workers, the unemployed, the retired, veterans, and other members of the 99% march on,”Wall Street on the Waterfront” at the Port of Portland. Organizers expect hundreds of people to mobilize to engage in a moving community picket of the terminals at the port, effectively shutting down the ports on this day.

The West Coast Port Shut Down specifically aims to disrupt business-as-usual for Wall Streeton the Waterfront.

Goldman Sachs, a well know Wall Street institution, is the majority shareholder of Stevedore Services of America (SSA), which provides services, equipment and labor at Terminal 2, and full operational management at Terminal 5 at the Port of Portland.LA port truck drivers are in a labor struggle with SSA for what the drivers term a ‘sweatshop on wheels’. 17,000 truck drivers are on strike in Los Angeles to demand their right to organize and for safe working conditions.

EGT is a multinational grain export corporation and another target of this action. Bunge Ltd is the largest partner in EGT who reported $2.5 billion in profit in 2010 and has direct ties to Wall Street. Locally, EGT is refusing to honor the Longshore worker union contract in Longview, WA.

“By shutting down work at the ports this one more day that Goldman Sachs and Wall Street firms are unable to create profit,” said Kari Koch, organizer with Shut Down the Ports Working Group of Occupy Portland. “We are picketing to say, Enough! We will not stand for corporate profits at the expense of working people, we will not stand for attacks on workers, and we will not allow our schools to be closed, social services slashed, and families to be impoverished by your greed!”

The community picket is organized by Occupy Portland with the support of rank and file union members. Occupy Portland has been engaging directly with rank and file port workers multiple times a day during the organizing; and numerous rank and file union members are active in the working group.

“The support from workers at the port has been incredible. We were out at the ports talking to workers multiple times a day during the organizing of this action and today we see them honoring the community picket,” says Jordan McIntyre rank and file union painter “Occupy is a place for union members, non-union, and the unemployed to gather together to change the inequality of wealth and power in our system.”

The Portland action is part of a West Coast Port shut down movement that is historic in scope. The West Coast Port Shut Down demonstrates a notable level of coordination between at least 30 different occupy movements across the country, including Oakland, Eugene, Seattle, Vancouver BC, Anchorage, and Longview, beyond the West Coast, Houston, TX, Honolulu, HI, and the Doro-Chiba railway workers in Japan will participate.

We must have struck a nerve…. Hurt his wittle feewings…. or just hit him with the facts too hard. Although Jamie Dimon is not the first 1%er to complain of the Occupy Movements consistent drumbeat against the excesses and corruption of the rich, he is someone who is in a position at a worldwide financial firm, who could make a real difference if he wanted to…. But that’s just it, he doesn’t. As long as his pockets are lined with everyone else’s cash, he’s just fine, or he was until the Occupy Movement came along. CEO’s like Dimon will either change, or become an endangered financial species. – Occupy Cyberspace – American Autumn

Dimon was responding to a question at an investor conference about the hostile political environment towards banks.

“Acting like everyone who’s been successful is bad and that everyone who is rich is bad — I just don’t get it,” said Dimon at the conference, which was organized byGoldman Sachs[GS 100.47 -4.66 (-4.43%) ].

Big banks, and CEOs like Dimon, have come under fire from Occupy Wall Streetand other protesters who are disgruntled about income inequality and feel that big corporations — financial institutions in particular — have undue influence on government. In fact, last month, the protesters in New York targeted Dimon specifically, marching to his apartment and the residences of other wealthy New Yorkers.

Dimon said he’s worked on Wall Street for much of his life and contributed his fair share.

“Most of us wage earners are paying 39.6 percent in taxes and add in another 12 percent in New York state and city taxes and we’re paying 50 percent of our income in taxes,” Dimon said in defense of his fellow Wall Street bankers.